


nothing's gonna harm you (not while i'm around)

by callunavulgari



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6556381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben and Rey Organa are born ten years and five hundred parsecs apart, but Ben can feel it in the Force the moment she comes into being. He can feel her every second of her way home, a bright star that outshines even the familiar intensity of his parents.</p><p>When she does arrive, his mother gathers Ben close and lets him lean in, until his nose is pressed right into the tiny thatch of brown hair atop her clean-smelling head. Rey watches him quietly and when he smiles at her, she opens her mouth and gurgles. "Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby,” he whispers into her hair. “Not while I’m around.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing's gonna harm you (not while i'm around)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaikamahine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/gifts).



> for a meme thing: things you said with no space between us. inspired by [this piece of art](http://faembrosia.tumblr.com/post/136006445133/nothing-is-going-to-harm-you-not-while-im), which connected that headcanon to those lyrics so firmly in my head that i've been itching to write it for a week. elizabeth gave me the excuse to do so. song is [not while i'm around, from the musical, sweeney todd.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLbOQROVQ5o)

Ben Organa is born just after a Senate meeting. Amazing, everyone says, how that Skywalker — no, no, not a _Skywalker_ , dear; an _Organa_ — kept right on talking through it all. The meeting had lasted almost ten hours, and Senator Organa had spoken for more than half of it. Not a shudder or a wince as she stood there. Shoulders back, neck straight; she’d looked every inch the princess that she was born to be. No one would have guessed if they hadn’t heard afterwards.

She’d only faltered upon exiting the room, tilting back to lean her weight against the wall — just for a moment — and when she’d straightened she had very calmly asked for her husband and a mid-wife.

They’d pulled Ben from her forty-two minutes later, red-faced and squalling, and her brother, who had never seen a freshly birthed child before, had leaned over Han’s shoulder and whispered, “Are they supposed to be that tiny?”

Rey Organa is born in the back of a shipping freighter. It’s not the Falcon, but the hum of the engines and the press of space-cold metal against her palm is comforting.

This time around, Leia is screaming. Whoever said that carrying a boy to term was harder than carrying a girl had clearly never carried a Skywalker girl, because little Rey has been a problem child from the start. She tosses and turns in the womb as if she can’t hold still, as if she wants to roll straight out of her mother’s belly and into the world. And her _kicks_ — oh, the less said about them the better.

(”A feisty one, aren’t you?” Han had crooned to her belly the first time Rey had kicked so hard that Leia had stumbled, winded. He’d looked up at Leia through lowered eyelashes, not quite hiding the pride and laughed, his eyes full of mischief. “Like mother like daughter.”)

Leia gives birth in the middle of uncharted space with only her husband, his wookie, and a droid at her side. And when little Rey finally slips from her and into Han’s hands, she is so silent that Leia has to crane her neck, frantic, until Han assures her that the child is breathing.

Ben and Rey Organa are born ten years and five hundred parsecs apart, but Ben can feel it in the Force the moment she comes into being. He can feel her every second of her way home, a bright star that outshines even the familiar intensity of his parents.

When she does arrive, his mother gathers Ben close and lets him lean in, until his nose is pressed right into the tiny thatch of brown hair atop her clean-smelling head. Rey watches him quietly and when he smiles at her, she opens her mouth and gurgles.

"Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby,” he whispers into her hair. “Not while I’m around.”

.

The sands on Jakku are hot, warming the leather of Ben’s boots until he can feel the heat straight through the soles. He’s limping, his robes are stifling, and he stinks of blood. Some of it is his. Most of it isn’t.

He’d taken them in their sleep, just like Master Snoke had said, but some of them had woken early. Some had woken and screamed, others had woken and fought, though not nearly well enough. That made sense though, he reasoned. They weren’t Skywalkers.

Rey had done neither, because he’d kept her asleep in his shuttle.

Still she sleeps, even in the bright heat of this sun. Her weight in his arms should be insignificant; at six she weighs little more than a sack of potatoes, but the wound scored deep into the meat of his thigh is still dripping. Any weight, even his own, is significant.

It should be a relief to reach Niima Outpost. Ben’s body aches. His heart, or what is left of it, is weary. His leg burns. But he finds that even that has been stolen from him. He does not want to put his sister down.

Unkar Plutt happily accepts the money that Ben presses into his hands. He is old and greedy, and will likely leave Rey to the desert sands the moment she can fend for herself, but Ben can live with that. His sister is strong. She’s a survivor. She _will_ survive and be stronger for it. She will survive because she is a Skywalker, an Organa, a Solo. That’s what they _do_.

He has to stoop to set Rey down on a thin, wooden bench, and it smarts, heat traveling up his side, but he grits his teeth against the pain. It’s worth it.

He looks at her face, and does his best to sear it into his memory.

Rey, at six years old, is all frail bird-bones. Her hair, a few shades lighter than his, is still done up in the knots he’d put them in that morning. They’ve come loose now, tendrils of hair falling into her face that he brushes behind her ear without a thought. She, thankfully, has inherited their mother’s nose rather than their father’s, and it wrinkles in her sleep as she is jostled. He stays close, fretfully wiping at a smear of blood that’s transferred to her clothing.

When he goes to pull away, she reaches for him in her sleep, her face twisting. She’ll wake soon. He swallows once, eyes burning, and leans forward to press a kiss to her hair.

“No one’s gonna hurt you,” he whispers to her. “Not while I’m around.”

Ben Organa takes from his sister a memory. A dozen. He doesn’t know. He tells her to forget and doesn’t care how much. The less she remembers about them — about Skywalkers and Solos and Organas — the safer she’ll be.

He is Kylo Ren before he even leaves the planet.

.

Kylo Ren hears the words.

A girl on Jakku.

He hears them again. And again.

Rage is familiar. Grief, _regret_ \- those are not. Not anymore.

He does what he has always done. He goes to her. He finds that bright, shining beacon in the Force, and he pulls.

 _You were supposed to be safe_ , he thinks. Her hair has come loose on one side, tendrils sliding into her face that he brushes back without a second’s thought; the muscle memory of a dead man.

The stormtroopers are carefully paying no mind to him, not willing to risk his wrath just for curiosity's sake. They ignore the girl in his lap better now than if he’d crept into their minds and ordered them not to.

“No one’s gonna harm you,” the remnant of Ben Organa sighs, head thumping back against the side of the ship. His voice is mechanical and gritty through the mask, purely Kylo — purely Ren. He can’t stop looking at her. Fourteen years since he felt something other than rage. Fourteen years since he left whatever remained of his heart with her. Fourteen years, and Kylo Ren’s eyes start to burn. “Not while I’m around.”

 


End file.
